Look Both Ways, page 23
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll get you sorted out.”
He was checking her for bruises or cuts or any other injuries she might have sustained while doing battle with the Arrival.
“Really, I’m okay,” Lillian said. She reached up, grasped his arm, and gave it a squeeze. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Joe smiled awkwardly. “So, some Advils. Where do you keep those?”
Lillian said, “Forget the Advils. I could use a scotch.”
“Coming right up,” said Joe, gently prying his mother’s fingers from around his arm. He went to the cupboard below the countertop where his mother kept her liquor. Since she’d been spending more time in a wheelchair, many of the items that once found a home in the upper cabinets had moved south.
He brought out a bottle of Ballantine’s and a tumbler and poured his mother a finger’s worth. She inhaled the aroma first, moved the amber liquid around in the glass, then downed it in one shot.
She looked at her son and asked, her voice serious, “You know there was someone under that car that was coming after me,” she said.
“I know,” Joe said.
“I think it was Daniella.”
Joe’s eyes closed briefly. “Oh, Jesus.”
“That poor, poor girl,” Lillian said. “This is so horrible.”
Joe nodded with shared grief.
“How many others?” Lillian asked her son. “How many others are dead?”
Joe hesitated before replying. “Reports are coming in from all over. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it might be. We’re stretched too thin to be able to deal with this on our own. Help’s coming but I don’t know when it’s going to get here.”
“But what about until then?”
“I don’t see a way for those cars to get you here in the house, but to be safe, let’s get you up to the second floor. One of those things might find a way to break through the front door, but I don’t see them climbing a set of stairs.”
As Joe spoke, his voice faltered. When his chin began to quiver, he turned away from his mother so she wouldn’t see.
“Joe?” she said.
When he did not respond, she said his name a second time. He took a moment to compose himself before turning around. “We really should get you up to your room. We’ll take up everything you need.” He forced a smile. “I suppose that would include the scotch.”
“Don’t forget the ice,” she said, nodding her agreement.
Joe got his mother settled up on the second floor. He’d had a stairlift installed a few months ago, with a seat built into it, so he didn’t have to help her up. Once upstairs, he assisted her into the bathroom, discreetly slipping into the hall while she did her business. Then he helped her to her bedroom. She got comfortable in a faded, fraying lounge chair, and he made sure she had something to drink—bottled water, as well as her scotch and some ice—and her favorite snacks, including a cardboard tube of Pringles and some seedless grapes. He set her phone on the table next to her and connected it to a charger.
“Joe,” she said as he was starting to leave the room, “can you grab me the remote?”
It was resting on the bedside table, next to a well-thumbed, used paperback copy of a John Irving novel. Joe grabbed it, and the book, and set them in his mother’s lap.
“I really have to go, Mom,” he said, his face starting to crack again.
She nodded. “Go save the island,” she said. “And be careful.”
He tried to crack a smile. “Later, I’ll arrest myself for stealing a bicycle.”
Joe slipped out of the room. She heard him go down the stairs and out the door. She picked up the remote with her bony hands and hit the red button to turn on the oversized, boxy television that sat atop her dresser. She flipped through the channels until she landed on CNN. Where was Wolf? Wasn’t Wolf supposed to be on now? It was one of the women anchors. Lillian couldn’t keep them all straight. They all looked the same to her. All very young and very pretty. At least when it was Wolf, you knew it was Wolf.
The female anchor was saying, “Details of what, exactly, is happening on Garrett Island continue to come in. There are reports of multiple casualties as autonomous cars made by the Arrival corporation continue to go haywire. And it’s not just happening on the island. We’re hearing that across the country.”
She watched a few more minutes of the news and concluded that she knew more than the reporters did. She’d had some firsthand experience of what was going on here.
Lillian picked up the remote and started flipping through the channels.
“Oh,” she said when she landed on Dr. Phil.
He should do a show on her, she thought. Dr. Phil should do a show about sons who were thinking about putting their mothers in a home.
She couldn’t imagine that Joe would do that now. Not after what she had been through. She’d been traumatized.
Every cloud had a silver lining.
Joe hopped onto his stolen bike and pedaled toward the downtown. The headquarters of the Garrett Island Police Department was one block off the common, and that seemed like the most sensible place from which to get a handle on things.
The street out front of the house he shared with his mother was, at least right now, clear of Arrivals, so he was able to make good time. He was rounding a corner into another part of the neighborhood, the coast still clear, when his cell phone rang.
He took one hand off the handlebars and got the phone out of his pocket. On the screen were the words lisa carver.
So maybe she wasn’t the one who’d been injured at the event. When he’d talked to his dispatcher, he’d said something about the president of the company losing her leg. Maybe she wasn’t as badly hurt as he’d been led to believe. He tapped on the screen to take the call.
“Chief Bridgeman,” he said.
“Joe!”
Who the hell—
“Sandra?” he said.
“Yes!” she cried.
“Are you okay? And why are you using Lisa—”
“Where are you?” she said.
“I just left my house. One of those cars tried to get my mom and—”
“Oh God! Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, she’s fine.”
“Have you seen my kids?” she asked, her voice frantic. “Any chance you’ve seen Katie and Archie? They’re not answering.”
“No, no, I haven’t. I’m almost to headquart—”
“No!” Sandra said. “You need to come here! To the community center. Are you in an actual car?”
“I’ve got a bike. But what’s happening here? I heard about the fire engine and—”
“It’s bad here,” Sandra told him. She lowered her voice. “Lisa Carver’s dead. At least one person from the fire department. Maybe others.”
Joe said nothing.
“Joe, you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I just can’t believe all this. I can’t—I just can’t be—”
“I need you here. I’m thinking, if we can get into Lisa Carver’s laptop, maybe we can find a way to stop these cars dead.”
“Okay,” Joe said slowly.
“And of all the people I know, you understand computers better than anyone.”
“I don’t know, Sandra. I mean, there was a time when I was a techie, but it was years ago. They’ve been upgraded like crazy since I worked with them.”
“You’re all I got, Joe.”
“But—”
“Just come by here and see if you can hack your way in. It’s a long shot, I know, but right now, I don’t know what else to do.”
“Okay, I can try. But don’t get your hopes up.”
“And on the way, can you go by my house? See if the kids are there?” Her voice dropped to a whisper and began to crack. “I’m scared to death, Joe. I’m scared to death something has happened to them.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m on it. Hang tight. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
Thirty
Running into Discount Bonanza was like entering the heart of a great metropolis. Archie glanced upward at the countless aisles of metal shelves that soared toward the ceiling like skeletal skyscrapers.
At ground level, huge wooden skids were piled high with everything the average American consumer could ever possibly want. Industrial-sized jars of pickles, enough to garnish the annual output of a dozen McDonald’s. Packages with enough rolls of toilet paper to wipe the asses of every single person on Garrett Island, with enough left over to clean up the bums of half of Boston. Nobody came into Discount Bonanza expecting to buy a single tin of tuna. You left with a case of tuna, which then meant you also had to head down to aisle four and buy a bag stuffed with a minimum of five loaves of bread, all squishy and white, so you could make enough tuna sandwiches to last a lifetime.
The shelves above ground level were stacked with more skidloads of goods, shrink-wrapped in industrial-grade Saran Wrap.
As Archie ran toward the shelves, he scanned them the way a mountain climber might assess a cliff face. What was the safest way up? Where were the best footholds? What route offered the best chance of reaching the top in the least amount of time?
Archie had to make his assessment with considerably more speed than a mountain climber might. The latter didn’t usually have a car on their ass.
Archie did.
The Arrival that had killed Nick was now in pursuit of Archie. He allowed himself only one glance back, enough to determine that the vehicle was a good eight to ten Arrival-lengths back, which he hoped would give him enough time to pick a shelf and start climbing.
He made a sharp turn down an aisle of cleaning supplies and spotted a sliver of space between products that led to the next aisle over. He darted in just as the Arrival squealed down the aisle, scrambled through, and came out the other side.
The Arrival, realizing it had been given the slip, stopped to recalibrate.
In this next aisle over, Archie looked up, as if from the bottom of a canyon. The shelf he’d snuck through looked promising. He grabbed a vertical metal railing with one hand, a horizontal shelf with the other, and got one foot solidly on an open crate of Swiffer refill pads. He hoisted himself up to the second shelf, then planted his foot on an immense, sealed skid of Mr. Clean antibacterial floor kitchen cleaner.
The Arrival on the other side emitted an electronic whine as it backed up. When it reached the end, it turned, shifted into drive, crept past the end of the massive shelving unit, and entered the aisle Archie had escaped to.
It stopped for a moment. Its various screens and sensors, designed to recognize human beings, determined Archie was not in this aisle, either.
The car sat there, as though puzzling it out. He had to have gone somewhere, it seemed to be thinking. His prey couldn’t just vanish.
Archie, having successfully reached the third shelf, paused for a moment to assess his progress. His gaze went to the end of the aisle, his heart pounding.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
The car began to inch forward.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Archie was barely breathing and not moving a muscle. But the car was slowly and silently moving in his direction.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Jesus, was it possible? Could the car hear his heartbeat? Or did it have some kind of built-in heat sensors?
The car stopped directly below Archie. The front wheels began to turn sharply, squeaking on the shiny, cement floor. Then, ever so gently, it nudged the shelf with its front bumper. Just enough to send a small shock wave through the metal bracing.
Archie felt the nudge.
The car, he concluded, was sending him a message.
I know where you are.
Okay, fine, Archie thought. You know where I am. Big fucking deal. What are you going to do, come up here after me?
Archie resumed his climb until he was sitting on the very top of the shelving unit, almost close enough to reach up and touch one of the hundreds of fluorescent tube fixtures that bathed the store in artificial light. No goods were stacked on this top shelf. It was like standing on a hundred-foot-long, ten-foot-wide runway. From this perch, Archie could see the tops of all the other towers of shelving. The aisles were, Archie guessed, eight to ten feet wide, allowing plenty of room for shoppers to maneuver their massive shopping carts in both directions, with room to spare. There would be no jumping from the top of one set of shelves to the next. Archie hadn’t been bad at the long jump in gym class, but you had a running start for that. This shelf was hardly wide enough to work up much speed.
But that was okay. He’d wait up here as long as he had to. And if he got hungry, he’d drop down to the shelf below and see what he could find. Maybe a chocolate bar the size of a two-by-four, or a can of Libby’s baked beans big enough to feed a platoon, assuming it had a pull-top. Archie had not thought to bring along a can opener on today’s outing.
He nearly allowed himself a chuckle. If he ate enough baked beans, he’d end up making noises a lot louder than heartbeats.
If Nick were here, he’d try to break the tension with a good old-fashioned fart joke.
But Nick is dead.
Archie would have to grieve later. Right now, he had to worry about his own situation. Find a way out of here. Get back home to his mom and Katie.
He figured Katie was safe. He’d left her at their house, and unless she was dumb enough to go looking for him, she was still there. But his mom was at the big Arrival event.
Archie felt a wave of fear wash over him. He’d had a few of those already since he’d arrived at Garrett Mall. But this was different. He wasn’t scared about what might happen to him. He was scared about what might have happened to his mom.
I can’t lose my mom . . .
Too.
He couldn’t help notice that, as best he could tell, he was the only person in the warehouse-like store. When the Arrivals had come streaming in, Discount Bonanza staff and customers must have run like hell for the back rooms. Archie seemed to remember, from trips here with his mother, that there were other access points to the store, in addition to the mall entrance. There had to be a way to the outdoors. A loading dock, maybe.
But how safe was it out there? He’d told Nick he thought most of the Arrivals were in the mall, but was he right about that? At least right now, atop this set of shelves, Archie felt safe.
Had Rory made it? Did he find a way out of the mall after fleeing out the back door of Victoria’s Secret and abandoning him?
“Asshole,” Archie muttered under his breath.
After walking the length of the shelf and back again, he decided to sit and dangle his legs over the edge. In the time he’d taken to scope out his new surroundings, the Arrival that had given the shelf a threatening nudge had vanished.
“Yeah, take a hike, dickhead,” he said.
He kicked his feet back and forth, wishing he had a phone so he could check in with his mom or his sister. Archie, for the first time, felt guilty about the way he had treated his sister, tricking her so he could make his escape. And then he felt a second pang of guilt. His mother had wanted him to be on his best behavior today. Don’t get into trouble, she’d said. This is a big day for me, she’d said. Don’t fuck it up, she’d said.
Okay, maybe she hadn’t said that, but it sure was impl—
Hello.
Archie heard the familiar squeaking of rubber on cement. The same sound that Arrival made before it had bumped his shelf. But this wasn’t just one squeak.
It was a symphony of squeaks.
He stood back up and ran to the end of the shelf, where he could see all the way to the entrance from the mall. A convoy of Arrivals was coming his way.
Heading for his shelf.
And they were picking up speed as they got closer.
The lead car—the same one that had killed Nick, judging by the red streaks on its hood—was doing probably thirty miles an hour when it rammed the end of the shelf at a forty-five-degree angle.
The shelf teetered.
“Shit!” Archie screamed, suddenly broadening his stance so as not to lose his balance. The shelf had tilted about six inches for half a second before settling back to its original position. Archie noticed that while the shelf he stood atop seemed to be a hundred feet long, it was actually built in sections. The one he was standing on was no more than twenty feet in length. The upshot of all that was, the Arrivals didn’t have to knock down a shelf that was the length of the entire aisle. They only had to knock down a part of it.
He looked down and saw other Arrivals positioning themselves in the aisle, side by side, but angled, as if parking on a street where you turn in, nose to the curb. They wouldn’t have a lot of room to build up speed, but if they synchronized themselves—and Archie had no illusions about their ability to do that—and rammed the shelf at the same time . . .
Archie thought his best plan, for now, was to move to another part of the shelf, but before he could, the cars barreled into the shelving unit’s vertical supports.
The shelf teetered a second time.
Archie cried out as he fell onto the top of the shelf, throwing out his arms to keep from landing on his face.
Half the cars would strike the shelf, and as they backed up to get ready to take another run at it, the remaining cars would ram the shelf. That way, even as the fronts of the cars crumpled, they maintained momentum, the shelf coming closer to toppling with each hit.
Archie found himself scrambling, crab-like, keeping his body low so he was ready each time the formerly level surface beneath him teetered. It was like that carnival fun house he and Katie went into on a family trip to South Carolina, with its shifting floors, rotating tunnels, walls of mirrors.
That was fun. This was not.
Skids loaded with merchandise fell to the floor. Another couple of hits and the whole thing was going to go over.
